August 5th, 2010

CPD and INSET — No Comments
5
Aug 10

Fierce Reflections

Every summer I try and read at least three books to support my professional development, often read during a summer holiday. Fierce Conversations was recommended at a Middle Leaders training session, presented by a newly appointed Assistant Headteacher. Hampshire Teaching and Leadership College have a ‘Leadership Library,’ so I simply phoned, asked if they held a copy of the book. They did and three days later it arrived at school along with two other books I requested.

Fierce Conversations has clearly been a success and the brand has evolved. Susan Scott has clearly presents an intuitive emotional approach that managers and leaders can relate to. Basically it is a very good

‘How to prepare and organise the difficult conversations you need to have, but often avoid, at work’ guide. Although ‘Fierce Conversations’ is perhaps catchier title.

How much will you find useful?  If you tend to avoid the difficult situations, then the book offers some very useful approaches to those situations / conversations. If you tend to be a little bullish or reactive, you might recognise yourself in some of the examples and consider a more heartfelt thoughtful approach.

Alternatively, you could just review these little gems.

Consider the impact of replacing the ‘yes, but….’ with ‘yes and….’ (You really need to hear this for yourself to appreciate the marked difference.)

‘This is the way that I see things but I expect you have a different perspective.’ Share your points of view and invite others to contribute theirs. When someone takes you up on your invitation to challenge your strongly held opinion resist the temptation to defend your idea immediately.

Simple situations: The sequence is – make a proposal, check for understanding, then check for agreement.

There is so much more to listen to than words, listen to the whole person

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing there is a field are i’ll meet you there. Rumi

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have. Emile Cartier.

As a leader you get what you tolerate.

Hire attitude, train skill.

A personal reflection,when with the Directors of Learning in particular, I need to follow two simple rules. Resist advising. Ask more questions (and listen to the whole person answer).

Susan Scott talks of the decision tree. A process of deciding when and how to make decisions. This might be a good technique for second in departments.

  1. Leaf decisions. Make the decision. Act on it. Do not report the action you took.
  2. Branch decisions. Make a decision. Act on it. Report the action you took.
  3. Trunk of decisions. Make the decision. Report your decision before you take action.
  4. Root decisions. Make the decision jointly, with input  from many people. These are the decisions that, if made poorly can harm the organisation.

In addition to the book, there are now Fierce Programmes, Certifications, Keynotes, Workshops, Merchandising and Newsletters, a new book ‘Fierce Leadership,’ all a part of FierceInc, there is even Fierce in the Schools. Next on the list - The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.

Popularity: 16% [?]

ICT — No Comments
5
Aug 10

School ICT lessons a ‘turn-off’

We are now watching the enthusiasm of the next generation waste away through poorly conceived courses and syllabuses. Professor Steve Furber Royal Society

The article highlighted Steve Furbers quote and as a former ICT teacher, I am not going to disagree completely, ICT for Business as a core unit is often met by our students with mild loathing. This said our board, OCR, offer over 20 different units and there are plenty of engaging ICT topics to chosen. Webpage design, digital imaging, use of video, audio, and then more practical unit titles such as Repair and decommission of IT equipment and Application of data logging. Now, as yet I have not worked out how to introduce Repair and decommission IT equipment to 30 students, but it is an option. Perhaps the key omission in the unit titles was the much anticipated ‘hoped for’ Games programming unit. Whether Mission Maker, Scratch, Kodu, Construct or recently released Games Salad (links) and Atmopshir – edugaming / programming engages students in much the same way as design technology and textiles. It is the invention, over coming challenges and seeing your designs realised, that empowers students. (This is not to excuse the absence of Flash – respected colleague @GideonWilliams has outlined many times what fantastic progress his students make with this platform in relatively short periods of time). Exam board #fail.

The article goes onto to stress that….

Young people have huge appetites for the computing devices they use outside of school. Yet ICT and computer science in school seem to turn these young people off.

Yes they do, but in my conversations with students, (whose input that is sorely missing from the article) their free time ICT interests are more recreational or practical. Downloading, playing, editing, creating, browsing, communicating, posting, discussing, ducking, diving and re-spawning.  In fact, we have only 2 students at Hamble College who have actively expressed a casual interest in ‘programming’ and / or ‘coding’ even though we do introduce all our students to Scratch in Years 7 and 8. In their school ‘free-time’ they would rather investigate / learn / play with Powder than programme or code.

A second group not represented in the article are Secondary and tertiary ICT teachers. Is our opinion not of value here? The facts stand strong, 33% fall, between 2003 and 2009, in ICT A-level candidates, the inference that it is my inability to inspire my students that angers me, and not just me, ‘not on my watch (I hope)’ tweets @daibarnes. Maybe it is the A Level content that is uninspiring?

According to the only A Level student up and willing to respond via Twitter before 9am…. perhaps so.

A Level student

@digitalmaverick would appear to support this view, suggesting that

A level’s largely a) Access project focussed b) lack of depth of content & coverage of triviality c) repetition of content (like DPA) frm GCSE

Of the two students passionate about IT as opposed to ICT, one is building his own website from the ground up and the other is teaching himself Objective-C and the only barrier to him publishing his Apps are the developer fees. Are these students going to be inspired by access? Come on BBC you can do better than that #fail.

Popularity: 10% [?]